Fertility via egg donor full of challenges despite technical ease

Data indicate it is easier than ever to achieve pregnancy with donor eggs.

More than half of all in vitro fertilization procedures using fresh eggs donated by other women resulted in live births in 2014, and 71 percent occurred ideally at full term, according to new data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Just don’t tell Jacalyn Laketa that the process is easy.

The pharmacist from Eden Prairie is celebrating her seventh week of pregnancy via the help of egg donation. But the process has been emotional, and Laketa, 37, was surprised by the lack of public and online resources to help women like her through these challenges.

So she reached out to the Star Tribune to kick-start a dialogue on her own.

“I believe this is mostly because many women choose not to tell anyone, not even their child who was conceived using this treatment,” she said. “There is still part of me that doesn’t want to talk about this because of maybe a feeling of failure, that I couldn’t conceive with my own eggs. But the better part of me wants to be open about having to get creative in order to experience pregnancy so that I can help other women not feel so alone.”

Laketa was surprised at the bittersweet feeling when she got the call at work that in vitro fertilization using donor eggs and her husband’s sperm produced 16 embryos.

“That was kind of the definitive proof that I clearly was the issue,” she said.

Four embryos were viable. Only one was implanted — a process in IVF known as a single embryo transfer that reduces the chance of riskier multiple births but also of successful pregnancies.

Childbirth remains months away for Laketa and her husband, Rob Kreatz, but she already is bracing for moments when she will look at her child and feel regret that her genetics weren’t involved.

The couple picked an anonymous donor, but received profile information about the woman — a college-educated artist and yoga instructor.

“There will be that one time your kid is swinging on the swing and you have this kind of fleeting thought: ‘Where did she get her hair color from?’ ” Laketa said. “But I know when I see that little one that it’s just going to be total bonding.”

Laketa will tell her child the complete birth story someday.

“My children deserve to know how they came to be,” she said. “It doesn’t have to define them."